Cliché
by PNH
Summary: Five phases Mac went through. Even she can embrace cliché, on occasion.


**Cliché**

Summary: Five phases Mac went through. Even she can embrace cliché, on occasion.

AN: I started this a long time ago, and I still feel it could do with a few more rewrites, but here it is anyway.

-

_Goth_

Mac was thirteen when she first died her hair. It was jet black, and she'd done it herself, managing to stain half her forehead. She topped off the look with cheap black lipstick she bought from the drug store.

Her brother laughed, her father raised an eyebrow and her mother shook her head with a smile, offering only "Oh, Cindy…"

She sat alone at school, glaring at everyone going past and giving one word answers to anyone that spoke to her. So, nothing changed, really. Even the other Goth girls didn't seem to like her any better.

A few weeks later she added streaks of purple, then orange. The black grew out, but she kept the colours, and switched to clear lip gloss.

-

_Vegan_

She'd never admit it aloud, but it was really just a rebellion against her parents. They lived for barbeques, steaks, and hotdogs; if it contained animal, they ate it.

She declared she was a vegan the day before Thanksgiving, announcing it grandly at breakfast over her muesli, casting looks of judgment at her father's breakfast of bacon and eggs.

The next day she took her seat at the table for lunch, prepared to face her parent's offers of turkey, but instead her mother served her up a vegan dish that actually smelled delicious.

"I found the recipe on the internet!" she declared proudly and Mac smiled warmly despite herself.

Mac really did try to keep it up, but it was pizza that was her undoing. Something about the combination of ham and cheese was just irresistible.

She let her parents know she'd returned to her carnivorous ways by nabbing a sausage off her father's plate one morning. He smiled at her from behind his newspaper, and her mother served her up a plate of eggs.

-

_Angry at the World_

Madison Sinclair stole her life. She stole her money, her mother, her sister.

Then her father blew all the money. Not her real father, but a man that apparently loved her so much that her couldn't bare to part with her, but didn't mind blowing the money that could have given her a future on a business doomed to fail.

She took to slamming doors; it was her own form of impotent revenge, and she hoped her parents flinched every time. She stopped talking to them except when absolutely necessary, and refused to eat dinner as a family. She began to view her brother as another betrayal, her instinctive love for the annoying little brat yet another burden for her to bear in this house of lies.

She learnt to press her face into her pillow, and smother her frustrated screams.

Her parents – her fake, accidental parents – noticed the change, tried to talk to her, but all she could see was Madison Sinclair. Because now that she knew, she realised there was a _resemblance_. Every time she looked at her mother she saw Madison's nose and Madison had gotten her eyes from her father.

He came to talk to her one day, sat down on her bed next to her, put an arm around her shoulders and rubbed her arm like he did when she was little and had nightmares.

"You okay kiddo?"

She lied and said she was. He smiled, but something she'd never seen before was behind his eyes.

"You know you can talk to me about anything, right? It's what I do, I'm your dad."

Her throat tightened as she tried to fight back stinging tears. She smiled, her face aching, and looked into eyes that were nothing like hers.

"Yeah you are."

-

_Slutty_

Well, not really. After Max – and Bronson, which she still felt a pang of guilt about – she just kinda… made out with people. Lots of people. Many whose names she never learned. She wasn't getting drunk; she just suddenly found random not-so-romantic encounters extremely enjoyable.

Parker started giving her lips gloss once a week, smiling wickedly. And proudly. They made out one time, when Mac actually was drunk. It could be incredibly awkward but thankfully Parker uses her magic perky skills to make it not. Except for the first week after, when she kept asking Mac for kisses goodbye every time she left the room.

Veronica teased her mercilessly about the whole thing, but at every party she could feel the blonde hovering, watching over her, making sure she got home okay. If Veronica wasn't there Wallace was, or Piz. It was sweet, but the surveillance started to throw off her game, so she decided to retire from the world of random hook-ups.

-

_Gay/Bisexual/Something Other Than Straight_

Maybe it was making out with Parker. Maybe it was Veronica and the hero worship she inspired. Maybe it was Rebecca Joy, who kissed Mac on the cheek when she was seven years old after Mac gave her half her candy bar (at the very least she credits that incident with why she always offers people her food. You never know when that could work again).

She can't pinpoint exactly when she started to get an inkling she was not completely heterosexual, but it starts to weigh on her more and more. She's open minded, but it's totally different when it's _you_.

She goes to the Gay and Lesbian Centre on campus. She forgets that Parker volunteers there as part of her Gender and Sexuality class. Parker _beams_, like Christmas has come early and Mac immediately has terrifying visions of Parker in a PFLAG shirt.

But Parker turns out to be the perfect support (even if she does keep trying to get Mac to credit Parker herself with her Mac's 'awakening'). She's still not entirely sure what she is, but she's starting to realise there's no rush.

She casually dates a girl Parker introduces her to. Her name is Jess. Mac likes her, Mac also discovers she _really_ likes breasts, but they break up after a couple of months after Jess admits that she's still dealing with feelings for her ex. They stay friends.

Veronica hands her an envelope a few days later. They haven't been seeing much of each other since Mac met Jess, and when she sees what in the envelope it becomes clear that Veronica has noticed. There are several photos of her and Jess, holding hands under a table in the library, making out in Jess's car, one of Mac leaving Jess's dorm room looking... ravished.

She knows she should be upset about the invasion of privacy, but she knows Veronica well enough that this is just what Veronica does when someone withholds information from her.

"I'm sorry. I was worried about you, you kept avoiding saying where you were going… You could have told me."

Veronica's right, Mac knows, and she can't quite work out why she kept it a secret.

"We broke up."

Veronica smiles sympathetically, "Wanna go to the food court, eat ice-cream and check out chicks?"

They spend hours talking. Mac tells Veronica about Jess and Rebecca and secretly downloading 'Bound' to watch with the volume low and one ear listening in case her parents walked by.

She also confessed to making out with Parker, which got her soundly mocked, but did lead to Veronica confessing to a few encounters with Lilly Kane. Mac was shocked and made a firm decision not to think about it too much.

They start hanging out again. On movie nights Veronica and Parker keep sneaking in movies that they obviously thinks she'll suddenly like now that she's (semi) out, but apart from that not much changes.

Parker is still Parker, and even though Mac never actually tells the boys, they start talking to her about girls, so she guesses that parts been taken care of.

She still looks at guys sometimes, but she's not in any hurry to decide anything for sure. Parker keeps quoting text books and telling her that she should just go with the flow, whatever that means.

Coming out in college is almost too much of a cliché for even her. The only thing that could be worse was if she was one of the Gay Till Graduation girls (she's starting to learn the lingo), but she doesn't think that's going to happen.

She thinks she might finally have found something that fits, so to hell with rebellion. She was never very good at it anyway.


End file.
